tu4.2

Structure:

Convener: François (remember the “phone s*x” metaphor?)

Attendees: Ralf, Ervin, Kerstin, Klaus, Sebastian L., George, … (please complete)

Communication breakdown: Silence/inactivity on other site, Chinese whispering during team retrospectives and sharing results (Retro of Retros), different depths of conversation (co-located part / distributed part of team), people looking at the screen, not at their team mates
Getting Budget Approved (evaluating/estimating transaction&coordination cost is hard)
Insufficient understanding/appreciation of Retrospectives: Line managers who are interfering
Culture Delta: rather small differences of culture make the result useless, bigger differences unbalancable
Language: language skills, “sharing” a language (English/German/Danish)
Body language: not captured or unclear, remote people sometimes look as if they had Parkinson's disease
Technology getting in the way: amount of time lost dealing with it, bad/unreliable connection or sound, overwhelming number of tools
Never Met The Guy: trust level low because never met in person

Roll Call Q&A format/mood, one site just reporting
Low energy
Proxy participation (instead of the whole team),
One-sided facilitation
Silence/inactivity on the remote site
Mostly one site talking
Vocabulary using “us” and “them”
“Yes, yes” or “Yes, but…” culture
Reorg staffing WIP (?)
Lots of “Sorry, what did you say?” “Can you hear me?” “I didn't get that” - “Could you repeat your question, please?”
Too much tooling
Risky setup: distributed + different cultures + not same native language
Muted phones at the remote site
Participants multitasking, doing other things while in conference (even answering the phone!)
No clear meeting agreements
… 45 minutes into the conference call: “Ah, okay, we thought you said we should do <sth else>”

Kick-off week colocating the whole team, meeting face to face
include a “distributed X” simulation, then retrospecting ⇒ better understanding/appreciation of challenges & of the retrospective
build a shared goal & vision, make it visible (3D if possible!)
renew from time to time: meet in person on a regular basis

include private stuff in one “daily meeting” per week, sharing more personal stuff ⇒ builds trust, making friends, find a common language

Dedicated technology person (neither facilitator nor participant)
Do it in a really distributed way: everyone @ their computer, not in a meeting room

Having attended a retrospective before (not necessarily together) helps
If it's a “2 teams” kind of thing: do a co-located team retrospective and share results
Start the distributed retro together, do other phases on each site separately, share results & close

Sometimes people listen better when there's no video
get people familiar with tools beforehand (while they're together)
familiarize team members with online collaboration/problem solving
Limit time spent on it, don't wait
Designate an ambassador to communicate for each part of the team frequently (daily?)
Use avatars

Calling the other site “Remote” is demeaning - alternatives?
It's time consuming - expect longer response times
Can phone s*x result in pregnancy? (Yes, by creating an appetite…)
“Was it good for you?” (whose retro is it anyway?)
What timezones work or %
Fairness in selected time slot vs. always at the same time
Is it better to have everyone in the same setting (=everybody in their office on the phone) instead of two or more separate but “connected” team meetings?
How to generate & detect engagement
Multiple groups vs. completely distributed
Could it be that the difficulties of distributed retrospectives tip the economic balance against distributed projects?